Concerts Orange County

The Philharmonic Society of Orange County announced Monday it will present a U.S. exclusive series of performances of Beethoven's nine symphonies with John Eliot Gardiner conducting the London-based Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique in May 1999. Also as part of a festival celebrating the year 1999, mezzo-soprano superstar Cecilia Bartoli will return to Costa Mesa in April 1999 in a recital of works by Beethoven and other composers.

Your Songfest passport this year has Italy stamped as the destination. But you're going to make a surprise side trip. To Germany. "If one stuck entirely to Italian, it's sort of short in the song repertoire department," Songfest co-founder Martin Katz said in a recent interview from his Michigan home.

The members of rock band Seven Mary Three belong to a minority of young rockers: those willing to acknowledge that the road to commercial success is paved with compromise. The Orlando, Fla.-based quartet has seen alternative-rock radio warm to its single, "Cumbersome," and has seen its major-label debut album, "American Standard," crack the Top 100 of Billboard's album chart (it's currently No. 31).

In this ever-changing world of new technological innovations and pop culture trends, it's nice to find that some things remain constant. Take Fu Manchu. The hard-rockin' Orange County quartet recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. Yet the band's musical philosophy and lyrical orientation have barely changed.

They flew in from as far as Kentucky and Alaska. Some came prepared to drop $500 for a seat. And just about everyone was stoked for a trip down memory lane as the Eagles launched their historic reunion tour Friday at Irvine Meadows, their first show in 14 years. "Their lyrics have just keyed in to special times in my life.

About 300 shouting anti-Communist protesters tried to dissuade concert-goers from attending a Sunday afternoon performance intended to raise money to send to Vietnam for orphans and other children in need. Amid pushing and shoving, the protesters contended that funds raised by the event would be channeled through the Communist Vietnamese government, meaning there is no guarantee it will reach targeted orphans and ill children.

The Beatles sang about fixing a hole where the rain gets in. The Sun Theatre, Orange County's newest, glitziest pop concert club, aims to fix a perennial, gaping hole in the county's network of music venues and lure big-name touring acts that often have skipped Orange County because there was no suitably sized place to play. The Sun, scheduled to open Sept. 2, is a hangar-like, yellow and tan concrete box in a corner of the parking lot at Edison International Field of Anaheim.

Jim Pash, an original member of the Surfaris, thinks he may have caught the ultimate wave Sunday morning--"a tectonic plate on a sea of lava. Now I know what it means to ride the epicenter." Pash sported a nasty facial gash as a result of the rough ride he'd taken at his home, north of the high desert town of Yucca Valley, just six miles from the epicenter of Sunday's 7.4 quake.

The Mozart Camerata has announced it will play five concerts in Newport Beach and two in Irvine for its 1998-99 season. The Newport Beach location will be St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, 600 St. Andrews Drive. The Irvine venue will be the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. All concerts will be conducted by camerata founder Ami Porat. The season: * Sept. 19, 8 p.m. in Irvine; Sept. 20, 4:30 p.m. in Newport Beach: Mozart's Sinfonia in D, K. 196; Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.

The name Paris Piano Trio may be unfamiliar, but the ensemble, which makes its California debut Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, is a venerable and well-respected one. The players are known in Europe simply as Les Musiciens--which is how they are being billed at the second stop on this tour, next week in West Hollywood--but only their individual names appear on their distinguished recordings. "We prefer just our personal names," said violinist Regis Pasquier.

The fledgling but critically well-regarded Newport Beach Recital Series kicks off its season Thursday in Irvine with a program celebrating the music of Felix Mendelssohn--and a new name, the Pacific Virtuosi. The idea, founding artistic director Leonid Levitsky said, is to gain wider recognition for the chamber music group. And, hopefully, a bigger audience. "Many advisors told me that the Newport Beach Recital Series name sounded too local," said Levitsky, a pianist who lives in Aliso Viejo.

The Beatles sang about fixing a hole where the rain gets in. The Sun Theatre, Orange County's newest, glitziest pop concert club, aims to fix a perennial, gaping hole in the county's network of music venues and lure big-name touring acts that often have skipped Orange County because there was no suitably sized place to play. The Sun, scheduled to open Sept. 2, is a hangar-like, yellow and tan concrete box in a corner of the parking lot at Edison International Field of Anaheim.

For the past 14 years, Gary Folgner has driven off all would-be competitors to remain the dominant force on the Orange County concert-club scene. But he concedes that won't work this time. Now he is David, the new guys are Goliath, and a slingshot isn't much use in the highly competitive music business. The Sun Theatre in Anaheim, which opens Sept. 2, has twice the capacity of Folgner's two venues, the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana.

The Beatles sang about fixing a hole where the rain gets in. The Sun Theatre, Orange County's newest, glitziest pop concert club, aims to fix a perennial, gaping hole in the county's network of music venues and lure big-name touring acts that often have skipped Orange County because there was no suitably sized place to play. The Sun, scheduled to open Sept. 2, is a hangar-like, yellow and tan concrete box in a corner of the parking lot at Edison International Field of Anaheim.

Orange County and punk rock. Strange bedfellows, indeed. On one hand, local bands such as Agent Orange, the Adolescents, T.S.O.L., the Descendents, the Crowd, D.I., Social Distortion and the Vandals helped usher in the rebellious, do-it-yourself spirit of punk rock. Musically speaking, they put Orange County on the map in the late 1970s. At the same time, however, a minority of destructive fans created a scary atmosphere at many concerts.

The Barenaked Ladies always had their fans, rabid followers drawn to the Toronto quintet's relentlessly upbeat folk-pop and onstage wisecracks. Albums sold well enough, and their concerts were usually well-attended. All was well in their universe. That was before this year, before the single "One Week" helped land the band's new album, "Stunt," in the Top 10 on the national sales chart, where it has remained since its release last month.

The watchword for today's Fifth Annual KROQ Weenie Roast & Luau at Irvine Meadows is "whatever." That's "whatever" in the good, old-fashioned sense--as in "open-ended; indeterminate, teeming with choices." The biggest and potentially best Weenie Roast bill to date, this 11 1/2-hour festival with 19 bands (among them five emerging Southland acts playing on a satellite stage) reflects a period of flux on the modern-rock scene.

The Leo Freedman Foundation in Anaheim has given the Pacific Symphony a three-year grant of $600,000 to extend its sponsorship of the orchestra's classical concerts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa through the 2000-01 season and to support other orchestra activities. The foundation has been sponsoring the classical series at the center since 1992. This grant will bring its contributions to the orchestra to a total of $1.6 million over the nine-year period.

The Mozart Camerata has announced it will play five concerts in Newport Beach and two in Irvine for its 1998-99 season. The Newport Beach location will be St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, 600 St. Andrews Drive. The Irvine venue will be the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. All concerts will be conducted by camerata founder Ami Porat. The season: * Sept. 19, 8 p.m. in Irvine; Sept. 20, 4:30 p.m. in Newport Beach: Mozart's Sinfonia in D, K. 196; Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.

The name Paris Piano Trio may be unfamiliar, but the ensemble, which makes its California debut Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, is a venerable and well-respected one. The players are known in Europe simply as Les Musiciens--which is how they are being billed at the second stop on this tour, next week in West Hollywood--but only their individual names appear on their distinguished recordings. "We prefer just our personal names," said violinist Regis Pasquier.